Governing diversity: a comparative analysis of pragmatic diversity regimes in city centres

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines how cultural diversity is incorporated into processes of urban renewal, creating images of the city, and considering local governance actors and strategies. It adopts the concept of diversity regimes to compare the two major cities in Portugal. The two cases studied here demonstrate the multiplicity of strategies employed to accommodate immigration and cultural diversity in local political action, but where city policy is in both cases aimed at the integration of migrants. The comparison of differentiated agency levels of local policy reveals distinct positions and models of intervention. These result from differences in the number of migrants, institutional settings and how the discourse of diversity does or does not incorporate narratives of territorial development and images of the city. We argue that what is relevant is the interplay between how governance networks are structured and participated in by migrants and how diversity discourse is incorporated (or not) into territorial development narratives. Both are part of new models of urban governance where the language of diversity and the symbolic arrangements to which it gives rise do not constitute a migration policy but rather a set of representational techniques for the creation of urban imaginaries.